GOP Adds Insult To Injury With Rejection Of Disabilities Treaty

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Senate Republicans passed up an opportunity for the U.S. to lead, because of half-baked arguments and conspiracy theories.

You wake early in the morning to the sound of your doorbell ringing, followed by a heavy knock on the front door. Bolting up in bed, you hear the ominous whir of a helicopter’s blades circling above your house. You race to wake up your disabled children and tell them to stay close and take only what they can carry. But even as you make a break for the back door, a glimpse of shadowy figures through your curtained windows tells you it’s already too late. They have you surrounded. The United Nations Peacekeepers are here to take your kids to school.

This scenario is not too far removed from the nightmare future some Republicans claimed would unfold if the Senate had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities earlier this week. That’s why, despite strong bipartisan support, the treaty failed in a 61-38 vote on Tuesday, five votes short of the required two-thirds majority. Another day, another missed opportunity in America’s most dysfunctional deliberative body. But this particular case of mindless obstructionism is both a bad omen for the possibility of progress in President Obama’s second term and a real blow to children and adults throughout the world whose physical and mental disabilities continue to pose serious economic and social challenges.

The convention, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006 and since ratified by 126 countries, aims to “promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.” In addition to outlining basic principles for fair and equitable treatment of the disabled, it established a committee of human rights experts tasked with monitoring progress and issuing non-binding recommendations pursuant to those goals.

Pretty scary stuff, right? Well, yes, according to people like Rick Santorum, one of the treaty’s most vocal critics. Writing at Glenn Beck’s online news hub, The Blaze (where I go for all my sober analysis of international human rights law), Santorum warned that ratifying the treaty could “potentially eradicate parental rights for the education of children with disabilities” and “allow our beliefs and values to be outsourced to outside entities that may not always have our best interests in mind.” Somehow, a measure meant to promote equal opportunity and increased accessibility was twisted into a law that would allow a shadowy council of bureaucrats in Geneva to authorize forced abortions and ban home-schooling for students with special needs.

After Republicans blocked the treaty, Santorum took a victory lap at The Daily Beast, writing that he opposes the treaty:

because our nation has been the worldwide leader when it comes to protecting the disabled. We should be telling the U.N., not the other way around, how to ensure dignity and respect for the disabled.

… However, the United States passing this treaty would do nothing to force any foreign government to change their laws or to spend resources on the disabled. That is for those governments to decide.

So if I’m reading Santorum correctly, he’s claiming that the treaty would allow the UN to dictate U.S. law, but not other countries because they write their own laws, but U.S. law is already stronger than anything the UN could ask for anyway, so the U.S. should be telling other countries what laws to write. In other words, he opposes it because Barack Obama signed it.